Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief*.

 

 

 

When I was a kid the closest public library was two bus transfers away.  Bus fare was only 10 cents with a penny for a transfer, but taking everyone on a bus wasn't just a financial impossibility, it was a chaotic nightmare even for this seasoned older sister. Lucky for me, there was the BOOKMOBILE!!  What is a bookmobile? A traveling library. Dreams arriving on wheels.

Every month on a Saturday, more often in the summer, the bookmobile would appear in the park just down the street from our house. Folks would gather early with adults visiting as kids dangled from monkey bars and fought over the swings. Then we would hear it -- the air brakes of the bus-like wagon lumbering up 10th street hill and stopping to take the turn to the back of Clarksville park. 

Being respectful kids we knew to let the adults go first which found us in the back of the line struggling to practice patience. Finally, it was our turn and the librarian would steer the little ones to the picture books and easy readers while I sought out the mysteries, biographies and science books. For a few minutes I'd be lost in other worlds thumbing through books, stumbling over new words and places never imagined.

One summer I found an old Atlas and renewed it several times exploring maps and working out "scale" and "mileage" to other lands. The summer waiting in vain for rain to break the heat found me reading aloud Swiss Family Robinson to the little ones drowsing on blankets strewn across the front porch. In seventh grade I carefully copied the words of two poems found in an anthology (a word I savored) to the inside cover of my notebook: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and October" by Robert Frost.  Escaping to those words during Math class where I struggled to learn "New Math" with its own mysterious language of "sets and subsets." 

On those Saturdays our time was up all too soon and I gathered the kids and books, waited for our names to be duly noted in the check-out log and every book stamped with a return date then placed into my tote. Making our way home in the brightness of the day, I'd listen to the little ones eagerly telling of their great finds while a part of me strayed back to the cool dimness of the bookmobile, where worlds waited to be discovered and dreams uncovered. 



*October by Robert Frost